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Nancy Floyd grew up in gun country — small-town south Texas — but didn't buy a gun until 1991, with the onset of the Gulf War. She wanted to connect with her brother Jimmy, a gun lover who died in Vietnam when she was 12.
"I remember telling my husband I want to buy a gun to know what it was like for my brother to have a gun," says Floyd, 51, an associate professor of photography at Georgia State University. Read More
The [California] state Supreme Court dealt a final blow Wednesday to San Francisco's voter-approved ban on handguns, rejecting the city's appeal of a lower-court ruling that sharply limited the ability of localities to regulate firearms.
The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in the gun rights case of District of Columbia v. Heller. The justices will consider whether a Washington handgun ban violates the Constitution's Second Amendment. An overriding question is whether the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms, or a collective right of state militias, such as National Guard units. USA TODAY's Joan Biskupic looks at key numbers about the case:
For gun control proponents and opponents a lot is riding on a former security guard for the Supreme Court Annex. Next Tuesday , the Supreme Court will hear arguments over whether the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and its requirement that any rifles or shotguns remain locked violates the plaintiff, Dick Heller's, constitutional rights.
Whatever the court decides, no one expects them to end gun control any more than the First Amendment's "congress shall make no laws" has prevented the passage of campaign finance regulations. The decision is likely to be limited to just whether a ban "infringed" on "the right of the people to keep and bear arms."
If the D.C. ban is accepted by the court, it is hard to believe that any gun regulation will ever be struck down. If the court strikes it down, where the courts draw the line on what laws are considered "reasonable" regulations will take years to sort out .
Thus far the District of Columbia has spent a lot of time making a public policy case. Their argument in their brief to the court is pretty simple : "banning handguns saves lives."
Yet, while it may seem obvious to many people that banning guns will save lives, that has not been D.C.'s experience. Read More
WHEN the Detroit Free Press recently revealed that six years under a liberalized concealed-carry law in Michigan have not resulted in higher rates of violent crime, gun battles at traffic stops, more police slayings and other gloom-and-doom scenarios, the newspaper put the lie to all the rhetoric against passage of the statute in Michigan, and every other state where so-called “right-to-carry” (RTC) laws have been adopted.
Reporter Dawson Bell noted that in the years since Michigan lawmakers passed RTC, “The incidence of violent crime . . . has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, has also declined.”
The newspaper even quoted Woodhaven Police Chief Michael Martin with the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police acknowledging that his group’s expectations of increased violence were unfulfilled.
Translation: Everything foes of self-defense and firearms rights said in their efforts to prevent Michigan from joining more than 40 other progressive states that have adopted sensible RTC laws was patently false. Their hysteria about “Wild West shootouts” and increased death among youths stands refuted by six years of experience, the same kind of experience reported in other states with similar statutes.
Compare this record with what has been occurring in Britain over the past decade, where a sweeping gun ban has made it difficult to own even a shotgun for sporting purposes, handguns are outlawed and fighting back can get you thrown in prison. According to the Jan. 10 edition of the Guardian, gun crime in the United Kingdom has jumped 400 percent in that decade. The reaction of anti-gun British government officials was nutty enough for American gun-control fanatics to love: The Brits want to ban deactivated firearms; you know, guns that have been rendered inoperable, apparently because such guns were used in a total of eight incidents in 2005-06.
Vice President Cheney signed on to a brief filed by a majority of Congress yesterday that urged the Supreme Court to uphold a ruling that the District of Columbia’s handgun ban is unconstitutional, breaking with his own administration’s official position. Read More
PHOENIX — Horrified by recent campus shootings, a state lawmaker here has come up with a proposal in keeping with the Taurus .22-caliber pistol tucked in her purse: Get more guns on campus.
The lawmaker, State Senator Karen S. Johnson, has sponsored a bill, which the Senate Judiciary Committee approved last week, that would allow people with a concealed weapons permit — limited to those 21 and older here — to carry their firearms at public colleges and universities. Concealed weapons are generally not permitted at most public establishments, including colleges.
Ms. Johnson, a Republican from Mesa, said she believed that the recent carnage at Northern Illinois University could have been prevented or limited if an armed student or professor had intercepted the gunman. The police, she said, respond too slowly to such incidents and, besides, who better than the people staring down the barrel to take action?
She initially wanted her bill to cover all public schools, kindergarten and up, but other lawmakers convinced her it stood a better chance of passing if it were limited to higher education. Read More
Just as the vagaries of quantum particles tend to confound scientists, so do the complexities involved in tracking human behavior. The most recent headache of this sort comes in the form of Steven P. Kazmierczak - a loving boyfriend, revered student, caring citizen and a psychotic killer
On Feb. 14, Kazmierczak strolled into a lecture hall at the Northern Illinois University armed with a shotgun, two handguns and a vitriolic hatred of society.
He opened fire on a sea of students, killing five before taking his own life. Now, his inexplicable actions have left sociologists, psychologists and law enforcement with one fundamental question. ?
There have been no answers as to why he did it.
There has, however, been a deafening outcry from the Left on the issue of gun control.
Last year, the Virginia Tech shooting sparked intense debate over the issue, and nine years before it was the Columbine massacre making headlines.
These tragic occurrences have served to strengthen the prevailing belief that stricter gun control will solve our problems.
But this is a grave oversimplification.
Some proponents of gun control assume violence is directly proportional to the number of guns in a given area.
The problem with this supposed axiom is that it does not hold true under rigorous scrutiny. Read More
With the General Assembly back in session, don't miss this opportunity
to make your voice heard at the Illinois Gun Owners Lobby Day (IGOLD) in Springfield, on Tuesday, March 11.
The Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) has partnered with several state pro-gun organizations, including your NRA, to promote this annual event where Illinois gun owners will directly lobby their state legislators on behalf of the Second Amendment and law-abiding gun owners.
Six years after new rules made it much easier to get a license to carry concealed weapons, the number of Michiganders legally packing heat has increased more than six-fold.
But dire predictions about increased violence and bloodshed have largely gone unfulfilled, according to law enforcement officials and, to the extent they can be measured, crime statistics.
The incidence of violent crime in Michigan in the six years since the law went into effect has been, on average, below the rate of the previous six years. The overall incidence of death from firearms, including suicide and accidents, also has declined.
More than 155,000 Michiganders -- about one in every 65 -- are now authorized to carry loaded guns as they go about their everyday affairs, according to Michigan State Police records.
About 25,000 people had CCW permits in Michigan before the law changed in 2001.
As I waited in the parking lot for the doors to open at 9 a.m., two guys pulled up next to me in a black Chevy pickup. They wore camo ball caps, jeans and sweat shirts. Nothing unusual there - until one slung a rifle over his shoulder as they headed for the door.
Anywhere else, people would grab their cell phones and dial 911. But this was the Pro Gun Show at the Roberts Centre in Wilmington. Dozens of guys were toting shotguns, rifles and handguns, not to mention swords and knives.
It looked like a not-very-well regulated militia from Red Dawn, reporting for duty.
As the line spilled out the door, each gun was carefully inspected and tagged to certify that it was unloaded, and safe to sell or swap.
"No cameras," said a sign. It occurred to me that I could get kicked out for carrying a Kodak, but nobody would blink if I flashed a Glock. Apparently, gun owners and dealers value their privacy.
I'd heard ads for these shows and always wondered about them. So when a guy in my concealed-carry class last month gave me a flier, I decided to find out what a gun show looked like. The pictures I couldn't take would show:
It looked sort of like a craft show. There were leather belts, German helmets from World War II, polished stones, wood carvings and special handbags for women who carry guns.
In a unanimous decision today, the California Court of Appeals ruled
that the City of San Francisco’s handgun ban is illegal under state
law, upholding a lawsuit filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and
several other groups.
“This is a great day for gun owners
and civil rights in California,” said SAF Founder Alan M. Gottlieb.
“This is the second time we successfully fought a gun ban in San
Francisco, and what this demonstrates is that the city’s leadership is
as horribly out of touch with the law as it seems to be out of touch
with reality.”
When Joe Horn stepped out his front door to confront two men in the process of burglarizing his neighbors house, he had no idea he was about to ignite a political firestorm that would change his life and put Texas' new Castle Doctrine Laws to the test.
